Yeoman's in the Fork Blog

Our recent Book Collecting 101 here at Yeoman’s, conducted by our resident book expert, Mike Cotter, prompted a question from one in attendance concerning inscriptions in books. The question posed was, "is there value in books with inscriptions in them?" At first glance, this seems like an easy answer. Obviously when a person writes in a book it tends to devalue it. Few value a previous owner name, underlining, or a previous owner gifting the book to Aunt Suzie with the exception being if the inscription was by the author or some such famous connection. The question posed by our attendee, however, caused me to recall another sort of rare exception I had just recently encountered.

Lord Byron is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and is still widely read and revered. He was, obviously, a leading figure in Romanticism and is famous for his works She Walks in Beauty and Don Juan. Byron's satire of the legend of Don Juan could perhaps be related to his famous affairs. Perhaps he felt he was easily seduced by beautiful women and thus, his exploits with the fairer sex were not so much his "womanizing" as much as the inability to resist the natural seduction. Whatever the case, Lord Byron was viewed as eccentric, extravagant, excessive in money and sex. It is for this reason that I found great amusement in an inscription I found in a two volume set we have at our store entitled, Letters And Journals Of Lord Byron: With Notices Of His Life," By Thomas Moore. A previous owner has written two inscriptions in the two volumes as follows: "Byron was a man of great talent but with loose morals and impulse. Therefore I hope my dear children will never like such reading as this book. C.C. Murray." And "I think this book bad reading and hope my children will never like to read it. Byron was a man of great talent but with loose morals and wicked. C.C. Murray." It is a very amusing and interesting inscription and I feel makes this set more attractive and thus, more valuable, if not just a little bit so. My suspicion was validated recently, when a potential buyer made an offer on the set. Even though, I had to turn down the offer, the potential buyer did say that he was interested in the set for his love of Byron and for the inscription it contained. Thus, it seems, previous owner writing can, on rare occasion, be an added treasure.